All eleven ex-employees who went on record blamed many of Team Bondi's problems on the studio's leadership. One programmer cited unrealistic goals, unreasonable deadlines and verbally abusive behaviour. Another describes McNamara as "the angriest person" he's ever met. "It's one thing for him to be angry behind closed doors, but it was incredibly common for him to scream at whoever was pissing him off in the middle of the office." In our conversation McNamara talked openly about his management style, saying that he sees getting into arguments as part of trying to get things done: "Am I passionate about making the game? Absolutely. Do you think that I'm going to voice my opinion? Absolutely. But I don't think that's verbal abuse."

In March 2007, a corporate team-building company named Leading Teams was invited to the studio to address employee discontent and high turnover, according to a source. While some team members were able to air their grievances, others were fearful of retribution and said they didn't contribute to the sessions. Morale improved momentarily, but things didn't stick. "One of the outcomes was the requirement that Brendan had to sit isolated from everyone else, but that just made it worse, since he would then pace back and forth all day, bothering people even more," described one of the programmers.

Of the 2007 team-building session, McNamara recalled how he "sat in front of the whole company, and they all told me what they thought about me." But he said he doesn't recall the content of their feedback, beyond the fact that "some people said good things, and some people said bad things." Bondi only held two sessions with Leading Teams; on the second day, general manager Vicky Lord was sat in the same chair. Did McNamara take any of his employees' feedback on board? "I don't know. It was 2007."

"I'm not in any way upset or disappointed by what I've done, and what I've achieved," he continued after a pause. "I'm not even remotely defensive about it. I think, if people want to do what I've done – to come here and do that – then good luck to them. If people who've left the company want to go out there and have some success, then good luck to them. If they don't want to do that with me, that's fine, too. It's like musical differences in a rock and roll band, right? People say they do want to do it; some don't."

Team Bondi studio founder Brendan McNamara.

The working conditions

Many of the ex-Bondi employees we interviewed talked about perpetual "crunch time" – a term often mentioned in the video games business when referring to long hours spent catching up on development milestones. While late hours are a common sight – and complaint – at American games and entertainment studios, designers new to the games business were taken aback. "When I joined the team, there was no indication that it was anything other than a 9-5, five-day-a-week job," said one artist who spent two years at the studio. "It was never outwardly said that you had to be working more [hours], but it was just the vibe of the place. If you weren't [working overtime], you couldn't progress any further."

"If you left at 7.30pm, you'd get evil eyes," another artist recalls. "The crunch was ongoing. It just kept on shifting; an ominous crunch that just keeps moving, and moving. Management would say, 'Oh, it'll finish once we meet this deadline,' but the deadline kept moving. That went on for a good year." Of the three years that this artist spent at Team Bondi, he worked 60-hour weeks on average. To meet each development milestone – around one per month, he says – his workload would jump to between 80 and 110 hours per week, for a period of one to two weeks at a time. The wider issue, one animator believes, is "game companies thinking that crunch can solve poor scheduling, or bad design decisions made early on in a project."

Another source who left the company in 2008 called his experience at Team Bondi the biggest disappointment of his life. "I left because of stress and working conditions, mainly. But the trigger was this: I received a reprimand for 'conduct and punctuality' for being 15 minutes late to work. I arrived at 9:15am – despite the fact I had only left work around 3:15am the same day, and paid for my own taxi home! I never would have thought you could put a sweat shop in the Sydney CBD."

McNamara sees it differently. "We all work the same hours," he told us. "People don't work any longer hours than I do. I don't turn up at 9am and go home at 5pm, and go to the beach. I'm here at the same hours as everybody else is. We're making stuff that's never been made before," he asserted. "We're making a type of game that's never been made before. We're making it with new people, and new technology. People who're committed to put in whatever hours they think they need to."

McNamara is unsure how often regular working hours were exceeded during the game's seven-year development period, but concedes that his own "standard workweek" may not be representative of the norm. "If you wanted to do a nine-to-five job, you'd be in another business," said McNamara, citing routine hours from 9am to 8pm - "whatever days it takes" – with frequent travel and 4am calls with the New York-based publisher.

Another issue raised by several of the Bondi Eleven related to overtime. "No overtime was officially paid in the three years and three months that I worked at Team Bondi," one artist told us. According to this source, staff contracts were worded in a manner which ensured that the only way employees would be paid for their overtime would be to wait until three months after project completion. Those who left the company before this time were not entitled to overtime payments.

During our conversation with McNamara he assured us that the overtime for all of the current staff members had been paid. "There was a bonus scheme for working evenings, and people got a month off for that," he said. "And people who worked weekends got paid for it. We brought in a weekend working scheme for that. But contractually, we don't have to do that. Part of the thing is that we pay over the odds, and it says in their contract that if they need to do extra time. I've done 20 years of not getting paid for doing that kind of stuff. I don't begrudge it. I get the opportunity to make these things."

In development hell

The biggest question surrounding the development of L.A. Noire is: what took so long? Two Bondi staff members who were among the first to work on L.A. Noire both note that "the PS3 didn't exist when the game was started, so lots of assumptions were made that were later on incorrect, or had to be changed." The pair also point to staff inexperience as a complicating factor; both of the team working together, as well as the difficulties associated with coming to terms with the new system's hardware. "That's compounded by lots of people leaving," said one. "By the time I resigned, around 80 people had left. I don't know what the number is now, three years later."

When an artist from the Bondi Eleven left in 2008, L.A. Noire was in "a relatively good working state. It had a decent framerate, and the art looked good, but it was so far from complete. The light at the end of the tunnel was almost non-existent. It was depressing to even contemplate. Bear in mind that at that point, the managers projected it would be released in the middle of 2009."

A gameplay programmer comments that when he resigned, he recalled thinking, "I can't do this to myself anymore. When I started, there was 'less than 12 months to go' on the project. Then, two and a half years later when I left, there was still 'less than 12 months to go'," he laughs. "I'm not sure whether management were lying, or just naïve."

A programmer recalls the experience that caused him to resign. "We were working on a demo that we were told would be shown to the press," he says. "For three weeks, I worked 15 hours a day, every day." However, he points out that "the times where we were working really hard were some of my most fun times there. We were just getting shit done; it was good, because we were making a lot of progress. Often, at those points, the management would leave us alone. So I'd go back to the apartment, and I wouldn't feel terribly bad. I'd be tired, and I'd sleep." After three straight weeks of gruelling work, the programmer was shocked to discover that the demo wasn't being shown to the press after all. In addition, half of the material he'd been working on for three consecutive 100-hour weeks ended up being completely reworked.

When asked about the game's seven-year development process, McNamara describes its ups and downs: "I think the beginnings and the ends are always great, and the middle is torture. That's the same with everything. It was the same with The Getaway, and the same with the stuff I did before that. In the middle, it just feels like you're watching paint dry. It moves very slowly. But when you get to the end, you hope it's all worth it." He said that "everything" is riding on this title: "the studio, the opportunity to make new things; family, house. Everything. All the usual stuff."

The final product was more a police procedural than an action game.

Looking back, what would he have done differently? "I think we'd think twice about Sydney, wouldn't we?" McNamara asked Vicky Lord, Bondi's general manager, who was within earshot throughout our 50 minute interview. "There's not that much government assistance, compared to Canada or the U.S.," he says. "The expectation is slightly weird here, that you can do this stuff without killing yourself; well, you can't, whether it's in London or New York or wherever; you're competing against the best people in the world at what they do, and you just have to be prepared to do what you have to do to compete against those people. The expectation is slightly different."

"And the people who're making [this game], their experience [with other Australian game development companies] has generally been work-for-hire, which is a lower level of expectation in terms of quality than what we would expect, with Sony in London and all that kind of stuff. So that's been the hardest [part], but having said that, have we got great people here? We have," he concludes. "We've got some people who started as kids, and have since become great men and women. We're really proud to work with them."

Beyond Noire

After seven years in the making, L.A. Noire is now on store shelves. It's been the biggest game development project ever undertaken in Australia, and it's also been the longest. What can those who work in the industry take away from the project, and from the apparent disconnect between the Bondi Eleven's allegations and Brendan McNamara's responses? "Ultimately, all the developers can do is work their hardest to get hired at better companies. It is every developer's responsibility to know their rights, and be willing to fight for them," says Erin Hoffman, the blogger behind the 2004 'EA Spouse' post.

Hoffman should know. Her blog was written in support of her fiancé (now husband), who was working on the EA title The Lord of the Rings: The Battle For Middle-Earth at the time, and logging around 85 hours per week at the office. As a direct result of the blog and the media attention that followed, EA settled over USD$30 million in unpaid overtime with programmers and graphic artists at its California studio, after three class action lawsuits were brought against the publisher.

"Looking through what the developers are saying overall, to me this looks like a kind of casualty of globalisation," said Hoffman, after we showed her examples of the interviews conducted with former Team Bondi staff. "It does happen in the U.S., but less frequently, because publishers here will rarely green-light a project that doesn't have a proven team behind it, as opposed to a single visionary. Those single visionary situations rarely work out. They think that they can train anyone to their style of management. It is usually a huge red flag when any kind of senior person has burned bridges with their previous teams. Unfortunately, it does seem to amount to a huge project being given to a person who did not have a track record of being able to deliver on that scale. These projects are extremely complex, which is why the successful ones rely not on an individual's expertise in delivery, but a leadership team -- technology, art, game design. It also sounds like they put their money on an idea guy, not a game designer."

As the Australian development industry rebuilds in the wake of the many studio closures of the last few years, it's important that its workers know the avenues that are available to them if they're unhappy with their work situation. "There's a lot of naivety amongst young game programmers out there," said one of the Eleven. "There's all this young enthusiasm to get into the games industry. People are willing to do so much to do it, but they're not educated about how they really should be standing up for themselves, and making sure that the conditions are right."